India won't take foot off gas this time round

NEW DELHI: The government is unlikely to specify an emission target at the United Nations negotiations in Bonn next month, abandoning its commitment at the Major Economies Forum (MEF) in Italy early this month to considerably reduce its emission levels.

The environment ministry thinks it will be difficult for a developing economy like India to estimate future investments and technological advancements, making it impossible to commit a target emission level within a time-frame.

In the course of tough negotiations in Italy, New Delhi had bent in the face of pressure from industrialised countries. The biggest compromise at the MEF was to accept that all countries would work towards reducing emissions to contain global temperature rise within 2 degrees above pre-industrialisation levels.

In addition, the ministry is in discussions with experts from the World Bank, National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER), The Energy Resource Institute (Teri) and Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (Ireda) to develop an economic model to predict emission volumes that India would emit in future.

The model will project changes in various sectors of the economy and the level of fuel consumption. However, ministry officials say like any other statistical model used to predict changes in the economy, this model too will be based on assumptions such as levels of investment, growth rates and developments in technology.

���The results of a study may vary based on the assumptions and, hence, in a developing nation like ours, it is difficult to find out how the changes in quantum, investments and technological advancements could alter the economic scenario,��� an environment ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

A recent NCAER study said even if India grows at 8% every year with the current technology and policies, its per-capita emission will not exceed 2.77 tonnes in 2031, almost seven times less than the current per-capita emissions in the US and almost four times less than that in the UK.